


Harry's Women

by Nope



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-27
Updated: 2004-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:46:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25784617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: True love, no love, and the closest they get.





	Harry's Women

Lily thinks of flowers. The house squatting in the hollow is old and musty, full of bitter memories and dusty self-importance, but she knows how to drive all that away. Windows wide. Tulips in vases. Roses around the door. Herbs in window boxes. Rosemary and thyme. Mint and sage. Hanging baskets. Forget-me-nots. Begonias. Something for James's office, something even he can't kill. A cactus, maybe.

"We can trim the apple tree," says James, putting his arm around her shoulder. "Put up a swing for Junior here."

He touches a hand to her belly, that startled awe still in his eyes when he feels Harry kick. And it will be a Harry, she knows, a little Harry James Potter. Their son. Hers. She smiles and leads James up the garden path to the kitchen door and, standing on that threshold, hundreds of miles and a thought away from the war, she pulls him close.

My house, she thinks, will be a bright place, always full of light and colour and laughter and James and me and Harry makes three, and she puts all that she has and all that she is into her kiss.

And when she dies, it is with Harry's name on her lips and his cries in her ears, surrounded by green and the sweet scent of charm fresh roses.

~~/~@

Dudley likes the roundabout. He likes to put the other kids on it and then spin them around and around and around, as fast as he can make it go, and laugh when they wail and cry and slip. He likes the slide, because he's tall enough now to climb up the side and push other kids out of the way. He likes to kick his legs up on the swings and shout "Stand closer, Harry! Closer!"

So Petunia takes them to the playground, Dudley squeezed into a chair he's too big and too old for, Harry scuttling behind. They cut through the park and she barks when Harry dawdles. The park is soft and green, the playground all grey concrete and flaking red paint on rusting metal. Harry likes to peer over the wall. Petunia shoves him towards the other children.

They pull him in. They like Harry, because he never knows not to fight back and he always loses in the end. And Petunia thinks of flowers. Of how you can cut them back and cut them back and they will still grow. Of how you can dig down to get all the roots, get out your sprays and your powders, and come Spring there they are again, still growing where they fell, still struggling to survive. But it's not really flowers she's thinking of, she supposes; it's weeds.

There's a sharp cry behind her, bitten off before it can really get anywhere, and Petunia doesn't look around until she hears Dudley's laughing yell.

"Mommy, mommy, look! Harry fell over again!"

Yes, she thinks, flat and tonelessly, Harry fell over. She does not move to pick him up, though the other mothers in the playground are looking at her, eyes pitying or disgusted, appraising or without any interest at all. Petunia looks at Harry, Harry with his face screwed up tight and his eyes angry and wet, though he does not cry.

Harry falls over a lot, but he never cries.

~~/~@

The Potter-Parkinson marriage is called the PR move of the decade even after the Daily Prophet has to print a front-page apology for their all too candid snaps of the happy couple's honeymoon. Harry Potter is, after all, the Boy Who Lived, the Man Who Stopped You-Know-Who, the Saviour of the Wizarding World, and other, often Randomly Capitalised titles; while Pansy is known only for having been on (in whispers) "the other side". No one believes they could have anything in common except the pressure of politics.

The Ministry calls it a bright new dawn, the first step to long term peace. The Minister of Magic talks about healing wounds, about bonds greater than politics and deeper than old grudges, about building a new, joint future, unmarred by outdated tradition and pointless prejudice. The Minister talks at length about most things, hides her objectives with verbosity and is constantly dismayed at what people will let her get away with simply because they stopped paying attention.

Pansy just smiles her small secret smile and says, "really, Hermione, what did you expect?" They are drinking warm champagne in the large hall of some fancy hotel, filled with awkward strangers carefully not looking at the spaces their friends have left behind. Harry and the new head of the Department of Mysteries talk in fragments, grey eyes never quite meeting green. Pansy touches the shoulder strap of Hermione's dress and turns away. Hermione's plastic smiles and white-gloved waves keep the crowd moving until they are nothing but blurs, and Pansy pulls Harry behind a pillar and kisses him until they both can breathe again.

Sometimes they walk, hand in hand. Sometimes they dance, lost together, touching each other over and over. Sometimes they shop and Pansy sneers at shirts and sniffs at skirts and smiles when Harry whispers obscenities in her ear. Sometimes Pansy cries in her sleep and Harry wraps himself around her, breathing soft nothings into her hair. Sometimes Harry shivers and sweats and wakes and Pansy lets him shower and changes the sheets, makes him hot chocolate and lets him talk, the two of them perched in the dark on either side of the breakfast bar.

And if sometimes there are long brown hairs on the collar of her coat, or he comes home late and ruffled and with his shirt tails still wet, neither comment. Hermione was never his, as Draco was never hers, as they are neither the others. They merely dance around each other, silently in step, and if it's not true love then it's the closest to it they'll ever have.

Pansy laughs when Harry fucks her. Harry thinks of flowers.


End file.
